Marking
by iscariot
Summary: Parchment, parchment everywhere - the mind wanders


_This is me trying to find a spark. Normally, I write [as it were] Firefly - and other - fic. Well, one firefly fic in particular. Anyway, writer's block. So I thought I'd bring some of the ideas I am wrestling with to another sandpit and see what happened - here's hoping it's not too bad; certainly it is inspiring me to [maybe] give a full-blown HP fic a go. We'll see._

_This fic is beta-ed by me, when not chasing my 16 month old son around the house as he destroys all in his wake - so all mistakes are my own, or my son's..._

_I hope those that read it, enjoy it and if you really feel the urge leave a review, positive or negative ...tx._

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><p>Severus Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts [he always capitalised his title in his mind when he was feeling aggrieved at the world] hated marking; it wasn't that he considered the task of objectively assessing his student's work unduly onerous – or particularly difficult - it was simply that he dreaded the inevitable sense of futility that overwhelmed him each time his inability to hammer information into the heads of the majority of his cement-brained students was reinforced; such futility extended even unto his senior classes whom, despite having demonstrated an amoebic level of competence in passing their OWLS, generally couldn't be trusted to find their own backside with both hands a map and a flashlight unless under constant – and competent – supervision.<p>

In times past, when he retained some small measure of idealism – before Dumbledore and Voldemort had taken turns in sanding it from his hide – he had tried cajolery, entreaty and even (heaven forefend) encouragement in a vain attempt to inspire his students towards something approaching competence, before giving it up as an exercise in futility and resorting to the simple expedience and terrified the information into them – if nothing else, he was rewarded with the occasional sardonic chuckle.

He regarded the teetering pile of parchment in front of him with a particular measure of distaste. The combined sixth-year Grffyndor/Slytherin class were the bane of his existence [when Dumbledore and Voldemort weren't using him as a shuttlecock, that is]. On the one hand you had a group of inbred malcontents who were firmly of the opinion that their storied family histories could, in some way, compensate for their congenital idiocy; on the other hand, the spawn of Gryffindor usually couldn't spell 'caution' let alone exert such, and, further, when said group had the collective common sense God had – in one of his more generous moments – given to a brain-damaged amoeba; Snape considered that any lesson he could walk away from a win.

Frankly, he felt less concern for his personal well-being facing Voldemort than he did he facing Longbottom in the potions laboratory; at least with theDark Lord the chances of his corpse being retrieved in some identifiable form was statistically higher. He allowed himself a slight grimace, if it wasn't for Longbottom's undeniable brilliance in herbology he could have presented a strong case that the boy would have made a fine addition to medical science as a [deceased] object lesson – assuming, if the corpse had been 'produced' during potions, that all the pieces could be retrieved and/or identified.

Sighing, but manfully prepared to face the inevitable, he selected the first parchment. While he was pleased to note that the paper belonged to neither Malfoy or Granger – the bell curve could be blown apart later – he was dismayed to discover that he was face to face with the demented ramblings of Vincent Crabbe whom, it was fair to say, while well qualified to provide a dissertation on the culinary applications of glue and crayons, was not so adept at lending his gourmet predilections to the intricacy of potions. Rumour had it that Crabbe had a bezoar for a stomach, and the culinary discrimination of a starving herd of goats, and therefore it was hardly surprising that he tended to regard potions ingredients as a collection of things that could be inhaled, ingested or imbibed. Snape could hardly contain his anticipation at the thought of the letter that the Headmaster would inevitably be sending to Crabbe's parents explaining that their offspring had finally bitten off something that he couldn't chew.

Snape allowed himself a moue of distaste at his ill-humour, the Crabbe boy wasn't all bad and did show some small measure of ability in other areas of the curriculum; in potions, however, he was a disaster, the Slytherin equivalent of Longbottom. He gave thanks that the boy had both Goyle and Malfoy to stop him sending himself (and, in all probability, entire levels of the castle dungeons) into low-level orbit. While Malfoy's actions were predicated on a solid foundation of enlightened self-interest (inasmuch as he – logically - had no desire to be blown to kingdom come), it was just as likely that he couldn't be bothered having to produce the effort required necessary to find another enforcer. Goyle's motivations, however, were a bit of a mystery. While it was true that Crabbe was his friend, and that he, like Malfoy, likely retained a fairly healthy instinct for self-preservation, trying to peer into the bottomless chasm that was Gregory Goyle's mind, in order to discern the existence of any other extant motivations, was something that Snape considered pointless. Goyle might competently play the part of an unyielding – and unthinking - block of granite, but you didn't get marks in theory papers, like the boy did, by being stupid. However, Goyle had an established mien that would have given the Oracle at Delphi fits, such was its opacity.

It was probably just as well, Snape thought, that that idiot – sourced from an idiot _par excellence_ in Trelawney - prophecy was about Potter, and not Goyle, otherwise the prophecy would have achieved some sort of record in the brevity of its foretelling. It was probable, he thought, that the central processing unit for all things prophetic would, much like a muggle computer running one of those Windows operating systems, have crashed and the message would have been lost in transit – he did derive a modicum of amusement at the thought of Voldemort, having broken in to the Department of Mysteries, uncovering a prophecy that read: "Do you wish to restart now?".

He quickly perused Goyle's paper: precise, exact and revealing nothing beyond the defined parameters of the exercise. What was asked for was given, and not a scintilla more; would that Miss Granger would learn such restraint. Alas, Granger was clearly incapable of doing what she was asked when the issue at hand – at least in her mind - was one of academic rigour. What Granger had yet to grasp was that just because someone had written something down – and then some idiot saw fit to publish such – did not make it gospel; actually, it didn't even make it apocrypha, but who was Snape to split semantic hairs?

Granger excelled because she had a mind like a steel trap and a compulsiveness that was alarming in one so young and not (currently) institutionalised.

It was true that rigour was good, however, there was a marked difference between leaving no stone unturned and digging up the entire field – Miss Granger took her excavations to extremes; Open cast mining had, in terms of its thoroughness – or its potential for environmental destruction - nothing on Miss Granger.

That the current academic standards – from the reality-impaired bureaucrats at the ministry - stressed the ability of the student to regurgitate information on record, and not provide a mediated synthesis of the material, meant that students like Granger, who had talent but no discretion, would have a rather rude awakening when coming face to face with the real world – Snape very much doubted that any of the Death Eaters that he knew would be prepared to stand around while the girl spouted documented precedent for the illegality of their actions; well maybe Rookwood might, he considered, but then the man was a lawyer and strange to boot.

Miss Granger, Snape decided, had a potentially interesting employment path ahead of her, wherever she went. If she chose not to stay in the magical world, pursuing a likely career in spell research, doors would open; there was, indubitably, a grand inquisitors position open with the Catholic Church; assuming that bunch of hidebound purists got over their innate prejudices – but then talent WAS talent; even Voldemort would employ Granger.

The potions master considered that there was a significant degree of similarity between Voldemort's Death Eaters and the priesthood of the Catholic church: both tended to be made up of narrow-minded, often frothing-at-the-mouth fanatics, who liked black robes, torturing people and pseudo-intellectual rationalisations for their continued existence. That both happened to be led by men in serious serious denial about their own personal history only added to the synchrony.

Of course, he mused, it was just as likely that Miss Granger would end up as a high-end dominatrix such was her need to exert control over her environment and, if extant relationships continued along their current arc, Mister Weasley would indeed be whipped in both deed and word: although he hoped not, the Weasley boy was starting to emerge, not only, from the shadow of the his illustrious year-mate, Potter, but from that of the various 'luminaries' that comprised his family – being surround by older brothers who, almost to a man, were brilliant in their respective fields could often led a person into a desperate attempt to compete or an even more desperate attempt to compensate. Fortunately, Ronald, had, in much the same way that he had worked through, and past, his jealousy of his friend's notoriety (which is what it really was and not the more commonly attributed fame), moved to a point where he was forging his own identity and working to his own strengths – unfortunately, the saturnine master mused, those strengths were not within shouting distance of the potions laboratory where, to all intents, he was near as big a liability as Longbottom although not due to incompetence but through complete disinterest. Snape had come to dread each bemusedly uttered 'oops' emanating from the vicinity or the Gryffindor side of the room as it usually presaged an admission of grievous mis-application of potions ingredients by Weasley.

Admittedly, sometimes serendipity came into play but usually the class got to practise their bubblehead charm - and Weasley got another detention with Filch with whom the boy got on surprisingly well. Apparently, they had bonded over chess where Filch, when he wasn't terrorizing the undersized denizens of the castle, spent large amounts of his free time working on maintaining his FIDE Grandmasters rating.

He took a moment to search through his pile of parchments and withdrew those of Granger and Weasley. True to form, Granger's was annotated more thoroughly than the Gutenberg Bible while Weasley's stuck solely to doing the bare minimum in order to pass; there was, however, a somewhat more revealing squiggle in one corner which - albeit it took a fair degree of squinting - appeared to depict a rook (wearing the unmistakeable colours of the Chudley Canons] on a broom performing, if the whizz-lines were any indication, a Wronski feint.

Snape allowed himself a wry smile, some things were what they appeared, but then, he thought, drawing the next parchment, appearances could be deceiving.

Although not in the case of Miss Bulstrode who looked like a brick proverbial, moved like a front row forward and wielded her intellectual capabilities with the finesse or a well aimed blackjack. Appearance, however, while not necessarily deceptive also failed to reveal many things, like the fact that Miss Bulstrode was the top student in the school when it came to Care of Magical Creatures; in her presence even the most ornery blast-ended skrewt would roll onto it's back and purr like a kitten (if said kitten had emerged from the lab of Doctor Frankenstein). Hagrid was seriously considering adopting her; or he would have been if Millicent had been an orphan.

Knowing the girl's parents, Snape was seriously considering doing the half giant, and the girl, a favour.

Of course, appearances could also confirm the blindingly obvious.

No matter the difference in social standing, origin or belief systems, Pansy Parkinson and Lavender Brown were well able to fit the sobriquet 'open all hours' – albeit the ladies operated independently of each other and serviced a somewhat different clientele. Parkinson was very much a subscriber to the pureblood notion of winning friends and influencing people – albeit horizontally; Miss Brown, however, simply – it was rumoured – had less moral restraint than a stoat in heat when it came to all things 'biblical' in nature; it was also rumoured that she had a list, that she was checking twice, checking who's naughty, checking who's nice... apparently she had a preference for naughty, whatever that meant; Snape wasn't in any particular hurry to find out.

Snape did make a note to ensure that the hospital wing was adequately stocked with contraceptive potions.

He briefly considered the notion that he could imperius Brown and Parkinson and send them to a Death-Eater revel as something akin to a syphilitic time-bomb. Ultimately, he decided against such a course of action, it was impractical to have to wait the several decades of unimpeded access the disease would need to wreak havoc on the death-eater ranks and, as most of Voldemort's cadre were already madder than a bag of snakes, waiting for the disease to drive them mad was an exercise in redundancy.

Oh well, he thought, best laid plans and all that; he did, however, wince slightly at the pun, before checking over the respective ladies' parchments. Whatever else could be said of the pair, they were competent when it came to potions; admittedly, 'competent' in the lexicon of Severus Snape meant 'statistically less likely to destroy us all', but then, you took what you could get with this job; even 'salvation' and 'redemption' were potentially fatal consequences of working, as it were, for The Man.

Maybe marking papers wasn't so bad after all, he thought.


End file.
